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Tese De Doutoramento TESE DE DOUTORAMENTO Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa e Alemá Universidade de Santiago de Compostela “Enchanting and Disenchanted Narratives: Fairy Tales and the Short Fiction of Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence” Doutoranda: María Casado Villanueva Directora: Dra. Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez Santiago de Compostela, 2013 Resumo: O obxectivo desta tese é examinar o papel desempeñado polo conto de fadas tradicional na narrativa curta de dous autores modernistas, Katherine Mansfield e D.H. Lawrence, como parte dunha práctica intertextual que enriquece o significado dos seus textos. Pártese da hipótese de que tanto os modelos narrativos coma os motivos recorrentes do chamado “conto de fadas literario” proporcionaron un sistema de referencias fértil para Mansfield e Lawrence a pesares da intención explícita de moitos autores modernistas de desvincular o relato curto de formas tradicionais de narración. Atendendo ás interpretacións que enfoques estructuralistas, psicanalíticos, feministas e historicistas fan do conto de fadas, esta tese analiza unha serie de relatos de ambos autores demostrando que Mansfield e Lawrence usan elementos herdados do conto de fadas a través de estratexias discursivas diferentes que revelan preocupacións éticas e estéticas individuais. Mansfield amosa ser consciente dos valores ideolóxicos inscrito nos contos, que critica mediante a parodia, mentres que Lawrence explota as súas imaxes e dimensión fantástica para articular a súa complexa visión das relacións humanas e do lugar do individuo no universo. Resumen: El objetivo de esta tesis es examinar el papel desempeñado por el cuento de hadas tradicional en la narrativa breve de dos autores modernistas, Katherine Mansfield y D.H. Lawrence, como parte de una práctica intertextual que enriquece el significado de sus textos. Se parte de la hipótesis de que tanto los modelos narrativos como los motivos recurrentes del llamado “cuento de hadas literario” proporcionaron un sistema de referencias fértil para Mansfield y Lawrence a pesar de la intención explícita de muchos autores modernistas de desvincular el relato breve de formas tradicionales de narración. Atendiendo a las interpretaciones que enfoques estructuralistas, psicoanalíticos, feministas e historicistas hacen del cuento de hadas, esta tesis analiza un corpus de relatos de ambos autores y demuestra que Mansfield y Lawrence usan elementos heredados del cuento de hadas a través de estrategias discursivas diferentes que revelan preocupaciones éticas y estéticas individuales. Mansfield demuestra ser consciente de los valores ideológicos inscritos en los cuentos y los critica mediante la parodia. Lawrence explota las imágenes y dimensión fantástica de los cuentos para articular su compleja visión de las relaciones humanas y el lugar del individuo en el universo. Abstract: This dissertation aims to explore the relevance of intertextual references to the fairy tale in the short fiction of two modernist authors, Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence. This study’s point of departure is the hypothesis that both the narrative models and the recurrent motifs of the literary fairy tale provided both authors with a rich system of references despite the fact that most modernist authors attempted to detach the short story from traditional forms of narration. This dissertation analyses a corpus of short fairy tale-related narratives taking into consideration structuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist and historicist approaches to the study of fairy tales. The evidence that the textual analysis provides shows that Mansfield and Lawrence deploy fairy tale elements with different discursive strategies which reveal individual ethic and aesthetic concerns. Mansfield shows an awareness of the ideological values inscribed in the tales and criticises them through parody, whereas Lawrence tends to exploit their imagery and fantastic dimension to articulate his complex views on human relationships and the place of the individual in the universe. Acknowledgements: I have benefited from the support and advice of many people during the process of writing this thesis. I specially want to express my gratitude to Dr. Laura María Lojo Rodríguez, for her expert guidance and sustained encouragement and to Dr. Jorge Sacido Romero for his academic input. Finally, I would also like to thank Dr. Laura Marcus of the University of Oxford, thanks to whom I was able to benefit from an extended research stay in the UK. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... iii PART I: CRITICAL, LITERARY AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ............. 1 Chapter 1- Fairy Tales: History and Critical Approaches ..................................... 2 Chapter 2- The Fairy Tale and the Modernist Short Story .................................. 18 Chapter 3- Intertextuality, Modernism and the Fairy Tale ................................. 43 3.1 Intertextuality: An Overview ........................................................................... 43 3.2 Modernism and Tradition ................................................................................. 57 3.3 Parodic Uses of Intertextuality ......................................................................... 70 3.4 The Politics of Modernism ............................................................................... 77 Chapter 4- Katherine Mansfield, D.H. Lawrence and the Fairy Tale ................. 84 4.1. Katherine Mansfield and the Fairy Tale. The Notebooks and Letters. ........... 84 4.2. D.H. Lawrence: Novellas, an Early Legend and Some Fables ..................... 103 PART II: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ............................................................................ 116 Chapter 5- From Ritual to Romance: Different Appropriations of Cinderella 117 5.1 From the Ashes of an Old Self: D.H. Lawrence’s “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”. ............................................................................................................ 117 5.2 Princeless Cinderellas: Katherine Mansfield’s “The Tiredness of Rosabel”, “Her First Ball” and “The Child who was Tired” ................................................ 137 Chapter 6- Across Dangerous Woods: Parodying Little Red Riding Hood ....... 158 6.1 “The Little Red Governess”: Mansfield and the Gender Ideology of Fairy Tales .............................................................................................................................. 158 6.2. Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf: D.H. Lawrence’s “The Princess” .................... 179 i Chapter 7- Lessons from the Nursery: the Abandoned Child ........................... 201 7.1. Children and Fairy Tales ............................................................................... 201 7.2 The Romantic Image of the Child .................................................................. 212 7.3. The Death of the Child .................................................................................. 224 7.4. A New Image of the Child ............................................................................. 229 7.5. “Sun and Moon”, “A Suburban Fairy Tale” and “The Rocking Horse Winner” as Anti-Tales ......................................................................................................... 244 Chapter 8- Unexpected Awakenings: the Motif of Sleeping Beauty .................. 252 8.1. Bare Fingers and Sleeping “Beaus”: D.H Lawrence “The Thimble” and “The Lovely Lady” ........................................................................................................ 252 8.2. Sleeping Beauty Dreams about the Distaff: Katherine Mansfield’s “Sleeping Characters” ........................................................................................................... 283 CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................... 301 Works Cited ...………………………………………………………………………...311 ii INTRODUCTION The delight we experience when we allow ourselves to respond to a fairy tale, the enchantment we feel, comes not from the psychological meaning of the tale […] but from its literary qualities — the tale itself as a work of art. (Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment 1976) The captivating power of fairy tales which Bruno Bettelheim extols in his landmark study on the topic seems evident in contemporary culture, both in the profusion of popular manifestations of the fairy tale (such as films, television series, and the visual arts) and in the significant position that these occupy in present academic research and university syllabuses. In recent decades, rewriting fairy tales and reutilising their conventions has become an increasingly common practice associated with the aesthetics of postmodernism: Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt, Margaret Atkinson, Jeannette Winterson, Rikki Ducornet, Robert Coover, Alison Lurie, Joan Aitken, Tanith Lee and Ursula Leguin are just a few of the contemporary authors who have recurrently engaged in the task of fairy tale writing and re-interpretation. An unprecedented amount of recent criticism assesses the role of these postmodern fairy tales, while also discussing those texts which, in most cases, constitute the primary source of these re-elaborations: the work of Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers among other writers and compilers has also become the object of current evaluation and research. Thus, many folklorists today attempt to examine formal and ideological features present
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